He’d been a good kid, Tyrone, and – thank goodness – was still a decent young man. Mild-mannered. Whatever anger or irritation he might have felt about having his car taken seemed to have already dissipated by the time he was folding his long frame into her passenger seat. ‘Hello again,’ he said, then peered down at her dual control pedals with a laugh. ‘Blimey, this takes me back.’
‘Hi,’ she said, waiting for him to fasten his seatbelt. ‘How are you? I’m extremely sorry about all this, obviously. I’m planning to go full witch on my daughter just as soon as she’s in my eyeline, don’t you worry.’
‘Ah, it’s fine,’ he said, waving a hand. He had eyes like a husky, the palest, iciest blue. These, coupled with a pair of excellent cheekbones and thick black hair that fell to his shoulders, gave him a striking, almost warrior-like appearance – right until he gave you one of his wide, easy smiles, that was. ‘I did far worse things at that age. And if I’m annoyed with anyone, it’s Bo for thinking that we live in some kind of communist state, where my car is also the people’s car.’ He snorted, but it seemed to be more from amusement than fury.
‘If it makes you feel any better, Eliza’s a good driver,’ Lara told him as they set off. ‘Really sensible and mature. I know she won’t have been attempting any wheel skids or anything that might have damaged the car.’
He laughed. ‘Course she’s a good driver, she’s your kid!’ he said, and Lara’s heart warmed at his niceness, her shoulders uncrunching just a fraction. Maybe this would actually be okay, she thought in relief. Until he asked in the next breath, ‘So how come she was going to Cambridge today, then?’
‘What?’ Needless to say, this was news to Lara.
‘Yeah, that’s what Bo said. That she needed to drive down to Cambridge today for . . .’ He spread his palms. ‘I dunno. Something really urgent, my sister reckoned. So urgent they apparently couldn’t wait around for me to get back, to ask me about borrowing the car.’ There was an awkward pause. ‘I’m guessing you didn’t know that part of the story.’
Lara’s mouth was dry. Taking off in someone’s brother’s car was stupid and impulsive enough, but driving to Cambridge on a whim, presumably to track down Ben and stir everything up . . . ? Her spine froze at the idea of Eliza being so far from home, impetuously searching for her father like a vigilante out for justice. ‘No,’ she conceded, blinking and forcing herself to focus on the junction ahead.
‘Whoops. Sorry. Did I just land her in it?’
‘No, it’s okay.’ It was not okay though, not at all. And however cross she might be feeling about this unexpectedly wilful plan of her daughter’s, Lara knew too that the whole scenario could have been avoided. She shouldn’t have closed down Eliza so abruptly last night. Of course an eighteen-year-old needed more than a scant few facts. But for her to go haring off to Cambridge in such a cavalier, headstrong manner was far stronger a reaction than Lara could have anticipated. ‘Anyway,’ she said, hands stiffening on the wheel. Tyrone didn’t need to know any of this. ‘How are things with you? What have you been up to for the last – what? Eight years?’
Tyrone launched into a potted history of his life, but Lara struggled to concentrate, her mind still taken up by Eliza, and what might have happened if the police hadn’t stopped her. Eliza didn’t have nearly enough motorway experience to drive all the way to Cambridge alone, and in an unfamiliar vehicle. What if she’d had an accident? Become tired or distracted, lost focus for a split second? These things happened. The world could change in a heartbeat.
She found herself remembering one of the most terrifying moments of her life, back when her daughter was three. Eliza had managed to unclip the clasps fastening her into the buggy, midway along the street. The first Lara knew of it was when Eliza had tumbled straight out of the buggy and head first into the road. How long did it take Lara to dash forward and snatch her up while a Škoda Octavia screeched to a halt mere metres away? A second, maybe two? Long enough, certainly, that the world seemed to shiver and blur, Eliza’s life hanging perilously in the balance, until, with a gasp and a prayer, she was back in Lara’s arms, swept up from the tarmac and clutched tight, the blare of the car horn splitting the air as everything sped up once more.
Afterwards they’d both been in tears, but no real damage had been done, only a bumped head for Eliza, a sprinkling of new grey hairs for Lara and confirmation of the Octavia driver’s excellent reflexes. It had never left her, though, that agonising moment where things could have see-sawed either way. What if the car hadn’t been able to stop? What if Eliza had died? It haunted her, the idea that there was a parallel universe in which her little girl was no more, while Lara had been left a bereaved mother, destroyed by grief. Sometimes it seemed only a matter of chance that the two of them had made it this far together at all.
Half an hour or so later, Tyrone broke off from conversation to point ahead, where a white VW was parked up at the side of the road, with Eliza sitting rather forlornly beside it on a grassy verge. ‘There she is,’ he said.
Look at her, Lara thought, heart cracking a little as she indicated and slowed to pull in behind the white car, remembering all the younger incarnations of her daughter: in a pink leotard and tutu during the ballet years, wearing a princess swimming costume as she splashed about in turquoise holiday pools, her first secondary school uniform, with her hair in bunches and a too large blazer . . . Now, in the blink of an eye, she was a young woman with smoky eye make-up, ripped jeans and a sulky expression. She’s leaving me, Lara thought with a lurch, heaving on the handbrake. Somehow or other, while my attention was elsewhere, she’s grown up and wants to go her own way. And right now, that means away from me.
Eliza scowled as they approached, although she blushed and mumbled apologies as she held the car keys out to Tyrone.
‘Remember what I told you,’ Lara called after him as he said goodbye and began loping towards his car. ‘About training to be a driving instructor – think about it. You’d be good!’
He raised a hand in acknowledgement and left them to it. Eliza’s lip promptly curled. ‘What, you’re trying to get him to be a driving instructor now? God, Mum, is that all you think about?’
So much for meek, repentant Eliza. That hadn’t lasted long. ‘Well, no, obviously,’ Lara replied drily, spreading her hands wide to take in the road beside them and the fact they were both there at midday on a Friday. ‘Funnily enough, my mind has been taken up with other things this morning. Like you, getting in trouble with the police, after taking someone else’s car with a half-brained notion of driving to bloody Cambridge!’
She shouldn’t have said ‘half-brained’. She regretted it instantly. Because now Eliza was drawing away from her, eyes narrow with anger. ‘What was I supposed to do?’ she retaliated. ‘When I can’t trust you to tell me the truth any more? I’m not going to hang about waiting for you to drip-feed me information about my own existence. I’ve been doing that my whole life and I’m sick of it!’